What you own, minus what you owe.

The arithmetic is trivial. The valuations are not.

Net worth is assets minus liabilities, and that subtraction is the easy part — with the values this page opens with, $30,000 of assets against $17,000 of debts gives $13,000. What makes one net-worth figure useful and another meaningless is how the inputs were valued, and there are four places people consistently get it wrong.

1. Using purchase price instead of today's value. A car bought for $30,000 four years ago is not a $30,000 asset. Enter what you could actually sell it for this month.
2. Forgetting the tax owed on gains. A brokerage account showing $100,000 with $40,000 of unrealised gains is not $100,000 of spendable wealth — selling it triggers capital gains tax. The same applies to a traditional retirement account, where every withdrawal is taxable income. Some people keep a second, after-tax figure for exactly this reason.
3. Omitting assets that have no statement. A defined-benefit pension is often the largest asset a mid-career person owns, and it never appears on a bank app. So is accrued gratuity, and so is the value of an annuity already purchased.
4. Counting the same money twice. An offset mortgage balance, or savings earmarked to clear a card in full this month, can end up in both columns.

Liquid net worth, and why it is often the more useful number

Total net worth counts everything. Liquid net worth counts only what you could convert to cash in a few weeks without wrecking your life — so it excludes the home you live in, the pension you cannot draw for twenty years, and the car you need to get to work.

The two can diverge sharply. Someone with a $500,000 house, a $400,000 mortgage and $3,000 in the bank has $103,000 of net worth and $3,000 of liquid net worth. The first number says comfortable; the second says one boiler failure from a credit card balance. If you are checking whether you can absorb a shock, the liquid figure is the one to look at. If you are tracking long-run progress, use the total.

What the number is actually for

A single reading tells you very little. Net worth earns its keep as a series: the same calculation, the same rules, every quarter, so the direction and the slope become visible. That is also why the arbitrary-looking choices above matter less than making them consistently — valuing a car generously is not a problem if you do it the same way every time; changing method between readings is.

Two cautions. Comparing your number against a published median for your age is mostly noise, because those figures rarely say whether pensions and home equity were included, and both dominate the result. And a negative figure is not a verdict — it is the normal state of affairs after a student loan or a recent house purchase, and it corrects itself as principal is repaid.

Nothing you type here is stored, so tracking a series means keeping your own record. That is a deliberate trade: the page can promise your balance sheet never leaves the browser precisely because it never saves it.

Common questions

What counts as an asset?

Anything you own with monetary value: cash, savings and checking balances, investment and retirement accounts, real estate at current market value, vehicles, and other valuable property. Use current market value, not what you originally paid — a home bought for less than it's worth today, or a car worth less than the purchase price, should be entered at today's realistic value.

What counts as a liability?

Anything you owe: mortgage balance, car loans, student loans, credit card balances, personal loans, and any other outstanding debt. Use the current outstanding balance, not the original loan amount.

Is my data saved anywhere?

No — everything you enter stays in your browser tab and is gone when you close or refresh the page. Nothing is sent to a server, so if you want to track net worth over time, you'll need to note the total yourself each time you check.

Is a negative net worth unusual?

No — it's common early in adulthood, especially with student loans or a recent home purchase where the mortgage still exceeds the home's equity-adjusted value. Net worth is a snapshot, not a verdict, and it typically improves over time as debts are paid down and assets grow through saving and investment returns.

Worked example: $15,000 cash and savings, $40,000 in investments, and a car worth $12,000 gives $67,000 in assets. Against a $10,000 car loan and $18,000 in student loans ($28,000 in liabilities), that's a net worth of $39,000.